Juan  Guiraldes

Juan Guiraldes

Senior Animator

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and since he was a kid, Juan had a fascination with comic books and cartoons. Hypnotized by those animated moving images on TV, he spent hours trying to imagine how it all came together behind the screen. How did those mesmerizing characters move!?

Juan had the conviction that whatever he did, it was always going to be related to illustration or animation. Growing up in the 90's in a very distant Argentina and being there absolutely nothing related to animation, he decided to study Architecture and Advertising, the closest things to it.

Enter the mid 90's. 1993: Jurassic Park. The Beginning of the Digital Age. Then 1995: Toy story. It was very clear then and there that he would try the impossible to get to either ILM or Pixar.

He left Buenos Aires in the year 2000 with more questions and fears than anything else, but with an unparalleled drive to make it happen, no matter what. He headed to Vancouver Canada, where he studied 2D and 3D animation.

After watching LOTR in the year 2001, he knew he had to move to New Zealand, inspired by the amazing work done by Weta Digital. So he packed his bags and moved there, starting up at a very small studio an hour away north of Auckland, in the middle of the farmlands of beautiful NZ. After a few years working hard on TV shows, he managed to get his reel to a level so he was accepted in the animation dept of Weta Digital where he spent 6 years and a half, working on projects such as Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, Xmen, the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit trilogy, Man of Steel, Iron man, Avengers and more.

Then one day, in 2014, he got an email from ILM asking him if he wanted to come work for them. There was no saying no to that. He left NZ and has been with ILM ever since, almost 7 years. First Singapore for 3 years, and then London. His first project at ILM was Jurassic World, the same movie that inspired him to get into VFX. Coincidence? I don't think so ;)

The adventure continues...